So... a confession. I've worked on Alpha Protocol for almost 2 years, and I don't know which characters are good or bad. Which, in the spy genre, is a plus.

They all have their reasons and agendas that don't break down neatly into good and evil. That's fine; Obsidian's already worked with the Dark Side/Light Side range (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords) and also juggled the spectrum of Dungeons and Dragons alignments (Neverwinter Nights 2, Mask of the Betrayer), so diving into murky moral grey areas was a nice change of pace. Also, it was kind of liberating to just have the player do things, with the world reacting, and leaving the results up to cause and effect.

Our "dossiers" screen and a small selection of the cast a third of the way through the game.

In Alpha Protocol, the cause and effect breaks down into your objective, the means, the results, and then someone's reaction (and the results/reactions usually spur different objectives, and... and well, the vicious cycle continues). In short, the way you treat someone sends ripples outwards, and others agents and figures in the espionage community may either disapprove of your methods (loudly or quietly or with a fake smile as they're slowly drawing the gun from their jacket), or they may like the fact you stomped over someone to get where you needed to go. Even your bitterest rivals may respect the fact that you keep your mission in mind... no matter how many of your allies lie dead on the battlefield once you leave.

The essence of Alpha Protocol and agent accountability, Part 2. (The interesting symbolism can wait.)

As such, it's probably easier to break down Alpha Protocol character motivations into the following bullets rather than just good or bad or "they're on your side" or "they're shooting at you" (which can flip a lot and is equally meaningless), so here are a few of the driving forces behind the personalities in Alpha Protocol:

? A fascination with modern-day psychohistory.
? Freedom to act without having to report back to someone.
? Respect and trust of their superior.
? Beating the national pride drum.
? Job security.
? That nebulous belief in the "greater good."
? Boredom.
? Acquire as much cash and toys as possible, and the faster and shinier the better.
? Drugs and nostalgia.
? Continuing the grand old tradition.
? Basic human decency.
? Global economic voyeurism.
? The feeling of control.
? To be valued.
? Some are just plain nuts with a capital "nut."
? Instinct. Reason doesn't factor into it. After all, reason is a form of conditioning invented by Stalin... the 1730's Stalin, not the "Communist" one in the "history" books.
? And finally, some want to be left alone.
? As for you...

What does your character want? Well, we let you tell us in the game. Twice. And you get to see if the answers match at the beginning and end.

We track all this and so do the individuals in the game. Whatever your motivation and theirs, one thing's for sure - as much as you can do research on the Alpha Protocol cast of characters in the game, turnabout is fair play. They'll gather intel on you. They'll talk to the same contacts you do. They'll evaluate how you do things. They'll check to see who you've made "friends" with, how invisible/visible you've been on your operations, how you dealt with contacts and what intel you've uncovered, and make their judgments. Even people that might be the spy equivalent of Lawful Good could still end up trying to shoot you if they don?t understand your choices - or if they understand the repercussions more than you do.

Mike Thorton walks into a dry cleaner's shop; he hears muffled yelling to which he calls out, "Hello?"

"In the back." He follows the voice to the source to see a man tied in a chair, tape over his mouth, along with another man - an informant for Thorton in the Taipei hub, Steven Heck - walking toward him with a huge bottle of bleach. Clearly the man tied to the chair is about to be tortured for incredibly important information; yet Thorton needs information of his own from Heck -but he's (obviously) preoccupied. Alas,Thorton needs to say something and what he says could affect how Heck looks at him from then on. Does Thorton hesitate, offering to come back later? Does he instead offer to help, possibly gaining some reputation points with Heck? Or does Thorton go the professional route and get right to business, thus possibly angering his would be informant?

The three choices - or Stances as they are referred to in AP - will come up in every major cinematic in the game. Matched with a timer, the player will have to make their choice quickly to keep the conversation going toward what they think would be best. Yet how do we, as the developer, incorporate what can be a spiderweb of choices and reactive callbacks into the game with relative ease?

In Alpha Protocol, each dialogue starts off as a script. Once the script is finished, a table read is done to make sure there isn't anything that just doesn't flow right. Once any needed adjustments were made, the scripts were then handed off to some of the members in our QA department to start putting into templates. The template process was integral for several reasons. 1.) It gave us the WAV file names so the recording studio (Womb!) would be able to accurately name each file. 2.) It allowed us to test the flow of a conversation to make sure it worked correctly. 3.) It gave us the files necessary to create not only our subtitles and FaceFX animations, but also our Kismet (the scripting language for the Unreal 3 Engine) .t3d files so we could put the scene into the game itself.

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This is a look at the template for the aforementioned scene, showing what Thorton can say, the responses he'll get, along with reputation gains, what matinee each of the Stances will link to, and the file names. Click to enlarge.

Once the script is tested in the template to make sure everything links correctly, a flow chart is then created to help with setting up each of the scenes in Kismet itself. While some of the cinematics in AP flow in a rather straightforward manner (like the scene with Heck) others can literally look like a complex web of choices, events, and reactive moments. It's for these conversations that the flow charts help greatly.

In a previous blog, written by Obsidian's Matthew Rorie, a character named Grigori is mentioned. While the big moments of the Grigori conversation are either acting calm (for the most part) or slamming his head into the bar, there are a lot of subtle moments in that conversation that won't be apparent to the player on the first playthrough. That scene has quite a few reactive points that are very subtle, but show how much we wanted to focus on rewarding players for their choices.

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The flow chart for the scene with Grigori. Click to enlarge.

At the beginning there are three possible starting points for the scene that either goes along in the standard matinee to Stance Choice to matinee format; or things get more complex dependent on the variables the player has already set throughout the course of the game. Which hub has the player gone to after Saudi first? What activities did the player do in said hub? And once in Moscow did the player go to Grigori first or not? Each of those variables are accounted for in the first few moments

If you came by the Sega/AP booth at E3 this year, you no doubt got to see the Moscow train yard demoed by our illustrious Production crew.

The train was one of the first missions I designed for Alpha Protocol around Feb. 2007. Having just come off Tomb Raider: Legend in March 2006, I was still very much in a puzzle-y state of mind and my instructions were simple:

"Mike and SIE are chasing after an informant pivotal to the story and the climax to Moscow."

In my first sketch the player had to perform a series of hacks to change tracks, move loading cranes and other props to gate SIE from getting to the informant who she is trying to kill. The player would essentially be leap-frogging through the different sections getting ahead of SIE with a successful hack, then be gated by enemies allowing SIE to catch up or get ahead. This heavily-scripted series of events puts the player under pressure, forces some tough decisions and adds to the drama. The level was heavily influenced by the physics puzzles of Tomb Raider, and to a lesser degree, being a huge FPS fan, de_train from Counter-Strike.

Back in 2007, the train yard came later in the Moscow hub than in the final 2010 version. Back then it was called MP16, for Moscow Hub, Primary Mission, 16. After story revisions, it was decided that we move the level further up in the hub and nix the informant chase. This was re-implemented to some degree to another level in the Moscow Hub, the American Embassy.

Vantage point as the player attempts to gate SIE.

The Level Macro

The core design for the level let the player choose either the high-road or the low road. The high road was loosely intended to support the assault player, giving them high ground, good line of sight on enemies, and some cover to duck into for tac-reloads and reassessment. The low road was for the stealth player, allowing them to creep through the shadows, observe and strike where needed. The stealth path required more wrapping, hacking and exploration whereas the high road was a series of long pushes, with enemies in deep and fortified positions. One early design problem I had was how to get the players eyes on SIE so they could see her progress, and most importantly, see the fruits of their labor once the different hacks and gates had been performed.

The simplified series of pushes that make up the train yard.

After story revisions, it was decided that the player could potentially fight alongside SIE and the VCI. This way you had more options, more choice. In the long run this gave us many more options on the story and design side, as well as opening more choices for the player. Everyone wins.

The Level Micro

During the first proposed direction for the level, SIE 'wings' the informant, forcing them to run off leaving behind a trail of blood. The player could then follow the informant's blood trail through the snow by following bloody handprints on rail cars, footprints on the ground and even keypad presses on the bypass pads. With the informant chase cut, the blood trail was no longer needed, and although it was very cool and visceral, it too was cut. The intro is still mostly intact, with SIE salting her steaks instead of missing. This serves two purposes: 1. it immediately establishes SIE as a badass, and 2. nicely cleans up any issues with survivors during the intro scene.

Designers work closely with Art and Animation to get the story across. Once the cinematics guys got their hands on the establishing shot of SIE and her introduction, they really made it shine. There is even a shot where SIE looks identical to her concept art, a subtle but inspiring image for sure.

With SIE established and her motivations clear it was on to the next design challenge.

So we recently got in some of the Alpha Protocol TAC vests that Sega sent out to some select press. Being the huge nerds that we are, we thought we'd put them on and nerd out with them. Enjoy! Or, recoil in horror, your choice!